Gaga fans slam Amazon as $1 album fails to play

Online retailer Amazon has been flooded with complaints from US customers who downloaded Lady Gaga's new album, Born This Way, for just 99 cents - only to discover that they were unable to access most of the album's tracks via the online bookseller's new Cloud Drive 'music locker' service.

Amazon's offer on the album's launch day undercuts rival Apple's iTunes by a whopping $15 for the extended version including bonus tracks and a digital booklet, which topped the iTunes chart. The release dislodged the previous incumbent, Adele, whose album 21 had occupied the number one spot for four weeks. The standard version of Gaga's album, selling for $11.99, is at number four.

UK-based Gaga fans enjoyed a slightly less generous discounts, with the digitally delivered version of the album - devoid as it is of any physical manufacturing or delivery costs - available this week for £3.99 - a saving of more than nine quid.

But US consumers who cashed in on Amazon's 99-cent offer for the fright-wigged pop matchstick's latest warblings - which include such instant classics as Bad Kids, Heavy Metal Lover, Highway Unicorn, as well as the somewhat ironically named Scheisse - were soon lining up to complain that many of the album's tracks would not play.

"I was really excited about this deal," said one disgruntled Gaga-ist, "and I was thinking about purchasing a copy for my girlfriend in addition to purchasing my own. However, I can only access six of the songs on my cloud drive, so I don't think I'll be purchasing another copy. The other songs appear in my cloud, but I'm unable to download or even play them."

Referencing a recent album by Gaga's plastic pop rival Rihanna, one music 'lover' accused Amazon of a "good promotion gone BAD".